Giving everyone access to public housing regardless of income is part of a multi billion dollar construction program the Greens want introduced to help mitigate an economic downturn from the coronavirus outbreak.
The $27.9 billion housing trust would build 500,000 solar-powered homes over the next 15 years and would boost jobs, clear the waitlist of those needing housing and cause rents to fall in major capital cities, Greens leader Adam Bandt told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
ABC 7.30 screened a four-part housing special examining a number of housing related issues from Australia’s housing markets to housing affordability.
The problems of housing crises, gentrification, homelessness, unfettered real estate capital and unregulated development are hardly unfamiliar issues. Their effects are everywhere apparent in the modern city. For many, they are considered simply the unfortunate but inevitable cost of urban life. Keith Jacobs argues that the housing crisis is neither inevitable nor permanent and offers an historical account of how we got here.
Keith Jacobs, Professor of Sociology, University of Tasmania and author of Neoliberal Housing Policy: An International Perspective
After testing the market with a small-scale affordable housing development in Sydney, property advisory group Development Finance Partners (DFP) is tapping investors for $5 million for a further three, small-scale developments.
According to DFP principal Baxter Gamble, there is a significant appetite among many investors, in particular the trustees of self managed super funds, looking for low-risk, quick turnaround projects that deliver yield.
“Our first foray into the affordable housing market was the development of a small eight townhouse project in Kirrawee, Sydney,” Baxter said.
“DFP sourced finance and took equity in the development.
“Its success and the fact that it reflects the core of our group’s social values prompted our involvement in a further two projects.
While discussions about the accuracy of the latest government figures for numbers of rough sleepers in England and Wales will no doubt continue (Homelessness: Ministry accused of under-reporting issue, 27 February), it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that even this estimate is an increase of 141% since 2010.
We need to remain focused on interventions that will prevent people ending up on the streets, or help them back into stable housing as quickly as possible.
How would you feel if — homeless and at your lowest ebb — the room you’re offered is bare, its mattress heavily stained, the stove broken, the fridge constantly leaking, the bathroom disgusting, with drug dealers dropping around to collect money from your housemates?
That’s the situation Maree* found herself in at the age of 58, in a room of a privately owned share house in Melbourne’s north.
Four years on, the memory alone makes this cheerful woman tremble.
“It was like you were no-one or nothing. It was like the end of the world, those places,” she says.
For the privilege of staying at the rooming house, she paid $220 a week.
On the fringes and often unheard, those who have experienced homelessness are rarely given a voice.
When more than 100 people, who once lived on the street, came together in an Ipswich park over the weekend to connect with medical services, receive sanitary products, clothes and even hair cuts — they shared their stories of survival.
The event was run by Signal Flare, a not-for-profit organisation, started by formerly homeless man, Grant Richards.
The organisation hosts barbecues twice a year in Brisbane and Ipswich, and bring together service providers for the homeless.
Signal Flare patron, Gregory Smith, spent several years sleeping rough in bushland near Mullumbimby in New South Wales and said many homeless people felt isolated with no opportunity to connect with others.
Afew weeks ago in Auckland, while getting into a cab, a colleague and I were having an animated discussion about the merits of a capital gains tax. Before greeting us, the driver chimed in with his dislike for any tax on profits from the sale of property. An interesting start to the ride. A few questions later and the cabbie revealed that he owned four properties in addition to his family home. Welcome to New Zealand.
Or should I say, welcome to the world?
Globally, residential property remains one of the hottest commodities, with assets valued at $162 trillion, a dizzying amount that is almost three times the value of every single country’s GDP combined. While individual investors want a piece of the pie, it’s largely being driven by multinational institutional investors with unprecedented amounts of capital: private equity, pension funds and asset management firms. It’s called the financialisation of housing, and it’s coming to a neighbourhood near you.
Rough sleepers are sheltering in bins all year round, with surging homelessness in the UK blamed for a rising number of deaths by crushing and near misses while containers are being emptied, a waste industry report has found.
Homelessness charities and waste industry officials are calling for action to prevent “terrible fatalities”, after incidents in which vulnerable people sleeping in waste containers have died after being accidentally tipped into bin lorries.
At least seven people are known to have been killed in the last five years, according to the Health and Safety executive, and waste industry bosses have warned rising destitution in the UK is putting more lives at risk.
In the latest piece from our new housing team, Georgia revisits the topic of overcrowding to see how the technical definition of an overcrowded dwelling reflects the reality in Australia today. You can learn more here about the new tool the team have created to help local councils plan and advocate for affordable housing in their community.
As Glenn outlined in a blog last year, those living in severely overcrowded dwellings account for 44% of Australia’s homeless population. While these people are living in a physical dwelling, I think we can all agree they are not living in ideal or even conducive circumstances.